Decimort 2

Forgive my writing style, which often seems like a billboard ad. I can't help myself. — Tz.

INTRO
Decimort-2 by d16 Group is even more fantastic than it's predecessor. It boasts several new features, improvements, and extra control over the bit crushing process.

The technological limitations (low sample rate, bit depth, etc.) of vintage samplers helped to create their charm. I owned them all — Emu, Akai, Roland, Sequential Circuits, Ensoniq, etc. and this helps ease the pain of buying and selling those beasts. D2 brings back to life all the quirky, idiosyncratic noises, pleasing grit, grind, thickness, overtones, and harmonics without any ear-piercing shrillness. The vintage AD/DA converters tone is all there! Also included are analog-ish filters with resonance that are much wetter than most of the before-mentioned hardware samplers.

This plugin is often categorized as a bit crusher, but I think of it as a sound sculpting tool that offers high quality low quality color. As with all d16 offerings, this also has a cool name, sharp-looking user friendly interface, fantastic sound quality and functionality a la top-notch algorithms, and the support of an amazingly creative development team.

FAVORITE USES
• Low end and leads. I am loving this thing on bass lines, drum loops, and NIN-esq lead lines.

FAVORITE FEATURES
• Sleek GUI with size options.
• User-friendly.
• CPU friendly considering the serious crushing power.
• Excellent low-fi sound quality.
• Zero internal aliasing and no unwanted artifacts.
• Lots of control without the confusion.
• Re-sampler module provides deep shaping.
• Jitter enables ear-pleasing harmonic distortions.
• Price!
• Gotta love the D16 Group development team — they are cool, creative cats.

OTHER THOUGHTS
• Great sampler profiles/presets. Please add more! I could never have enough.
• Independent stereo channel processing has been dropped in a favor of adding the extra features like (advanced quantizer, images and approximative filters). D16 chose to go with advanced processing instead of independent stereo. I process in mono, so this is not a concern for me. Those who process in stereo will need to use two instances of Decimort-2 on separate channels within their DAW.
• After a week of noodling, I haven't looked at the well-written manual.
• Controllable dithering reduces quantization errors, which allows users more freedom to crush audio to bits and bits.

SUMMARY
D2 truly is "The highest quality low-quality effect you can buy." And, the price is great. I highly recommend this fine piece of audio software to anyone working with audio, who wants a bit of that vintage vibe. Used sparingly, this could become more than a tool — it could become a secret weapon! Tommy Zai gives Decimort-2, two mighty thumbs up that are ready, willing, and able to crush some audio. Thank you, D16 Group! Great stuff.